Real Customer Reviews: How Do You Get Them For Your Small Business?

Reviews are an incredibly powerful business tool that all businesses should be using to their advantage. Just think about the last business you bought from – did you read reviews before purchasing, or go on the advice of a trusted friend or family member? 

Even without thinking about your own spending habits, let’s look at some of the data: 

• 84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
• 98% of consumers read reviews for a local business
• 85% of consumers are more likely to use a business after reading positive reviews

Reviews ultimately help establish you as a reputable brand, help customers find your business, and prove that you are trustworthy. Having few or outdated reviews can mean your ideal customers might shop elsewhere. 

So, how do you get customers to write reviews for your small business? Let’s dive into the top 5 strategies for you to follow. 

Lost the buzz for your business?

Starting a business is exciting. Succeeding is rewarding. The bit between is hard, repetitive, and full of self-doubt. 

The Lonely Middle Club (From Business4Beginners) helps you through it:

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1. Pick the right review platforms to focus on 

There are so many different websites and review platforms that you can register your business on to try ang get reviews. And although it might be tempting to sign up for as many as possible, stretching your business too thin amongst these platforms can actually do more harm than good. 

It’s far better to have one or two profiles with 50 glowing reviews than to have 20 profiles with one or two reviews each. Plus, it’s much easier to collect reviews when you can direct customers in a simple direction, rather than give them dozens of options to choose from. Most customers are happy to leave a single review, not 10. 

So which platforms do you use? Ultimately, you should focus on where your customers are. If you’re getting a lot of business through Facebook, prioritise that as a platform. 

If you’re not sure what’s right for you, our top picks for the majority of small businesses would be to focus on: 

• Google: Setting up a Google Business Profile gives searchers information about your business in the right-hand side of the search results. It integrates with both Google Maps and Search, which puts your reviews front and center without requiring customers to do any extra digging. 
• TrustPilot: TrustPilot is one of the most recognised and trusted review platforms in the UK, with many consumers using it as a first port of call when researching a new business. Because customers are already familiar with it, they trust the reviews posted there more than other websites they might not have heard of before. 

For more information about review websites and where you should spend your energy, check out our article Review Websites: Should Your Small Businesses Sign Up To Them?. 

2. Don’t underestimate the power of asking for reviews 

We get it. It can be uncomfortable to put yourself on the line and directly ask for what you want. But when it comes to reviews, one of the best ways to get them is to just ask your customers for them. 

And don’t worry that this might look desperate or has a negative impact on how your customers view you. A study from 2015 has found that asking customers to recommend the service or product to others has a positive impact on their word-of-mouth of behaviour. (Söderlund & Mattsson, 2015)

It basically means most people did indeed go ahead and recommend the business to others. Furthermore, the study also found that being asked didn’t make the customer think negatively about the business.

With this in mind, don’t be shy to ask. There are many ways that you can do this. 

• Ask in person. If you’re with a client or customer, directly ask them for a review. You don’t need to give a big spiel, but you can explain how it will help your business grow. “Would you mind leaving us a review? It really helps get the word out about our business”. 
• Send a follow-up message or email. If someone has brought from you recently, why not email or message them to leave a review to get their feedback? “Thanks for purchasing! Please let us know how we did by leaving a review”. 
• Add review links to your email signature. That way, every interaction you have with consumers will have a link to leave feedback.“Let us know how we’re doing – leave a review!” 
• Include review links in your receipts or signage. Basically, anything that has your logo on it, why not include a link to your review platform to give customers an extra prompt? 

Most of these can be automated, which also makes it a lot easier. 

3. Make it as easy as possible 

The second something becomes hard work for your customers, they won’t do it. Seems kind of selfish and sad, but at the end of the day, these are people who are sacrificing time and energy to help your business out. The bigger the ask is, the less likely they are to do it. 

When looking at how to get customers to write reviews, you need to think about revoming every ounce of friction from the process. 

Firstly, always give your customers direct links or printed QR codes that lead to your review platform. If customers don’t know where to go, if they have to manually search for your business on Google or Trustpilot, you’ve already lost them. 

If you have multiple platforms (like Google, Facebook and Trustpilot) make sure that you leave links to each while signposting for your customer. Having a few options can be good as people will have preferences over which sites they use (and which sites they have accounts for!). But remember our earlier advice that you don’t want to overwhelm them with dozens of options. Less is more. 

If you are using specialised review platforms, you might also be able to create a dedicated single page to collect reviews – just like we’ve created using Senja. 

As well as making it easy to get to your review website, you might want to create a template or prompt for customers who aren’t sure what to write. Give them some bullet points like: 

• “Was the delivery on time?”
• “How friendly were the staff?”
• “Did the product meet your expectations?”
• “What would you say about our business to family or friends?”

Again, just make sure you don’t overwhelm people. A few ideas and options are great. Too many, and they’ll feel like they’ve got to write a 5,000 word essay and will back out. 

4. Interact (and learn!) from your existing reviews 

A good way to encourage reviews is to interact and engage with the reviews that you currently have. This is a great way to show that your business cares about the feedback, that you are responsive and trustworthy, and that it’s worth a customer’s time to leave the review in the first place. 

Now, this means interacting with reviews that might not be positive for your business. As much as we’d like to deliver the perfect experience every time, bad reviews are going to happen at some point. But the way you respond and interact with them can actually build more trust with your audience than having nothing but perfect 5* ratings. It shows that you’re real. 

A study that looked at hotels responding to negative reviews in regards to what effect it had compared to not responding. The scientists found that by responding the hotels came across as trustworthy and showing concern. (Sparks et al., 2015)

The favourable impact was even bigger if the response was given soon after the review was left and if the tone of voice of the reply was human. So don’t be tempted to use templates.

When faced with a bad review, stay calm and acknowledge the complaint. If certain factors were out of your control (like bad weather) you can point that out, but it’s important that you also acknowledge where you can improve as a business.

It’s also good practice to offer to talk to the customer about the experience in more detail and provide an email address or contact they can reach out to find a resolution. Lastly, make sure that you sign reviews with your name or initials to make them more human (and less like a generated response).  

For example, let’s say a customer ordered a product, but it arrived smashed. Instead of immediately saying it’s the carrier’s fault, why not go along the lines of: 

“[Customer name] I’m so sorry this has happened! We do our best to ensure each item is packed securely, but yours must have had a very rough journey. Can you reach out to us at [email] with your order number, and we get started on a replacement or a refund for you. 

If you could send us pictures of the item, this will also help our team see if we need to change our current packaging to make sure this doesn’t happen again. 

Thanks for reaching out! DS” 

In that reply, you have: 

1. Listened to the problem 
2. Not issued blame elsewhere (even though you might later take this up with the carrier). 
3. Acknowledged what you could do better to improve (in this case, look at how you package items)
4. Offer a solution
5. Signed off with your initials to make it personal

If you handle negative reviews well, you might even find that some customers update their reviews later to say how well your team handled the conflict. 

5. Offer incentives 

People are more likely to do something if they get something in return. That’s why offering incentives for reviews, like a discount for their next order or a prize draw, can really help encourage your customers to get posting. 

Just be careful, as there is a difference between an incentive and bribery. You don’t want to pay people to give you 5* reviews, which will make your profile incredibly misleading and untrustworthy. You also need to make sure that any incentive you offer doesn’t go against the platform’s guidelines, as Google has recently tightened its policies to prohibit incentives in an effort to tackle fake reviews. 

At Business4Beginners, we’ve recently taken advantage of the Spin the Wheel feature on Senja. This adds a step to your collection form where people who submit testimonials can try to win a prize (which are currently freebies and discounts on services!).

Mastering how to get customers to write reviews

If we boil down our 5 strategies, the secret to getting customers to write reviews is simply asking for them, making it easy, and giving users a reason to write a review. 

The slightly harder part of getting great reviews lies in providing the best service, product and experiences for your customers. But when it comes to running a small business, there’s no better place to start than Business4Beginners. 

Take a look at the tips, advice, and news to available to get the most of out your business.